Southwest Natural History Resources: Historic Naturalists in the Southwest

American naturalist and taxidermist Martha Maxwell became famous in the 1870s for her skill and expertise in collecting and preserving specimens of Colorado's wildlife but is virtually unknown today. On the Plains, and Among the Peaks, written in 1879 by Maxwell's half-sister Mary Dartt, provides a fascinating case study of how women practiced natural history and taxidermy, as well as a fresh look at the early exploration and settlement of Colorado.   Dartt's book tells the story of Maxwell's lifelong passion and dedication to work and education that made her a pioneer in more ways than one. It catalogs her important scientific contributions and development of museum habitat groupings and lifelike taxidermy mounts, showcases engaging accounts of wilderness excursions on the frontier of the Western United States in the 1860s and 1870s, and testifies to her resolve to show that women were capable of succeeding in traditionally male-dominated fields.   This scholarly edition of On the Plains, and Among the Peaks will spark renewed interest in Maxwell and Dartt as neglected figures in nineteenth-century US history and literature, opening a conversation that other literary scholars and historians will join to further situate their work within the numerous disciplines to which it speaks, including nineteenth-century American literature; women's, western, environmental, and natural history; and gender, museum, and animal studies.  

The riveting tale of two pioneering botanists and their historic boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition held a tantalizing appeal: no one had yet surveyed the plant life of the Grand Canyon, and they were determined to be the first. Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny traces their daring forty-three-day journey down the river, during which they meticulously cataloged the thorny plants that thrived in the Grand Canyon's secret nooks and crannies. Along the way, they chased a runaway boat, ran the river's most fearsome rapids, and turned the harshest critic of female river runners into an ally. Clover and Jotter's plant list, including four new cactus species, would one day become vital for efforts to protect and restore the river ecosystem. Brave the Wild River is a spellbinding adventure of two women who risked their lives to make an unprecedented botanical survey of a defining landscape in the American West, at a time when human influences had begun to change it forever.

The Forgotten Botanist is the account of an extraordinary woman who, in 1870, was driven by ill health to leave the East Coast for a new life in the West--alone. At thirty-three, Sara Plummer relocated to Santa Barbara, where she taught herself botany and established the town's first library. Ten years later she married botanist John Gill Lemmon, and together the two discovered hundreds of new plant species, many of them illustrated by Sara, an accomplished artist. Although she became an acknowledged botanical expert and lecturer, Sara's considerable contributions to scientific knowledge were credited merely as "J.G. Lemmon & wife." The Forgotten Botanist chronicles Sara's remarkable life, in which she and JG found new plant species in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Mexico and traveled throughout the Southwest with such friends as John Muir and Clara Barton. Sara also found time to work as a journalist and as an activist in women's suffrage and forest conservation. The Forgotten Botanist is a timeless tale about a woman who discovered who she was by leaving everything behind. Her inspiring story is one of resilience, determination, and courage--and is as relevant to our nation today as it was in her own time.  

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Colorado River Basin's importance cannot be overstated. Its living river system supplies water to roughly forty million people, contains Grand Canyon National Park, Bears Ears National Monument, and wide swaths of other public lands, and encompasses ancestral homelands of twenty-nine Native American tribes. John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, explorer, scientist, and adept federal administrator, articulated a vision for Euro-American colonization of the "Arid Region" that has indelibly shaped the basin--a pattern that looms large not only in western history, but also in contemporary environmental and social policy.   One hundred and fifty years after Powell's epic 1869 Colorado River Exploring Expedition, this volume revisits Powell's vision, examining ts historical character and its relative influence on the Colorado River Basin's cultural and physical landscape in modern times. In three parts, the volume unpacks Powell's ideas on water, public lands, and Native Americans--ideas at once innovative, complex, and contradictory. With an eye toward climate change and a host of related challenges facing the basin, the volume turns to the future, reflecting on how--if at all--Powell's legacy might inform our collective vision as we navigate a new "Great Unknown."

George Corning Fraser, who lived in the days before automobile travel became a way of life, was an easterner who loved to vacation on horseback in the American Southwest. No mere tourist, he sought out the most remote and forbidding landscapes he could find: the seldom-visited country north of the Grand Canyon, the vast slickrock expanses of the Navajo Reservation, and sites such as Zion Canyon and Capitol Reef before they became national parks. An amateur geologist, Fraser penned his own memorable observations of the region's landforms and jotted down engaging accounts of local ranchers, sheepherders, and villagers.   Frederick H. Swanson has edited Fraser's voluminous journals into a single volume covering three trips taken from 1914 to 1916. As Fraser wades the bone-chilling waters of the Zion Narrows, crosses the Grand Canyon in midsummer heat, and rides through the trackless forest of the Aquarius Plateau, he conveys impressions of the land that will fascinate any reader who wonders what the canyon country was like before it became a popular tourist destination--and one that will inform historians interested in early accounts of the region. Accompanied by a selection of photographs taken by Fraser and his fellow travelers, Journeys in the Canyon Lands brings to life the Southwest's breathtaking backcountry on the brink of discovery.

This is a true story of discovery and discoverers in what was the northern frontier region of Mexico in the years before the Mexican War. In 1826, when the story begins, the region was claimed by both Mexico and the United States. Neither country knew much about the lands crossed by such rivers as the Guadalupe, Brazos, Nueces, Trinity, and Rio Grande. Jean Louis Berlandier, a French naturalist, was part of a team sent out by the Mexican Boundary Commission to explore the area. His role was to collect specimens of flora and fauna and to record detailed observations of the landscapes and peoples through which the exploring party traveled. His observations, including sketches and paintings of plants, landmarks, and American Indians, were the first compendium of scientific observations of the region to be collected and eventually published. Here, historian Russell Lawson tells the story of this multinational expedition, using Berlandier's copious records as a way of conveying his view of the natural environment. Lawson's narrative allows us to peer over Berlandier's shoulder as he traveled and recorded his experiences. Berlandier and Lawson show us an America that no longer exists.

"See, there she is!" cried one visitor to the Centennial Exposition. "Just think! She killed all them animals," echoed another. "There, that's her!" All during the hot Philadelphia summer of 1876, throngs of people pushed and shoved their way into the Kansas-Colorado Building, eager to catch a glimpse of the small, dark-haired woman responsible for creating the extraordinary display of bears, deer, and other mammals cavorting over a Rocky Mountain landscape. Curious, skeptical, friendly--on and on they came, until the policemen stationed at the doors were hard-pressed to maintain control. The fairgoers were intent on seeing for themselves the "modern Diana" who had come all the way from the wilds of Colorado. Maxine Benson's finely crafted biography of Martha Maxwell illuminates the little-known but important career of a remarkable woman. Naturalist, taxidermist, museologist, artist--Maxwell pioneered in a number of fields new for women. Born in Pennsylvania in 1831 and educated in the Midwest, she traveled to the gold fields of Colorado with her husband in 1860. A chance encounter with a German taxidermist determined her lifework, and Maxwell soon devoted her boundless energy to hunting and mounting all forms of Rocky Mountain wildlife, which she displayed in unusual habitat settings in her museum in Boulder and later in Denver. Her spreading fame led to an invitation to exhibit her collection at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, where she achieved international renown. As Maxwell's major scientific and artistic contributions to natural history taxidermy and display were recognized, her influence carried to the Smithsonian Institution. Separated from her husband and alienated from her daughter, however, she became increasingly unhappy as her professional accomplishments grew. Her tragic and lonely death in 1881 revealed something of the price she paid for daring to be different. Like that of other accomplished women of her era, Maxwell's fame did not keep pace with the significant influence she had on her profession. Thanks to Maxine Benson, Martha Maxwell now takes her rightful place in the history of the West and of the nation.

As Capt. Lorenzo Sitgreaves set out in 1851 to explore the southern portion of the Four Corners region (won in the recent war with Mexico), his party included Dr. Samuel Woodhouse, a thirty-year-old physician and naturalist who kept a journal of their travels from New York to California. Woodhouse recorded three weeks in San Antonio, made daily entries across the Trans-Pecos, and, after a hiatus in Santa Fe, resumed his journal on the march to Zuñi Pueblo. Midway into their three weeks at Zuñi, he nearly died from a rattlesnake bite and was scarcely recovered when the explorers again started west. The largest part of Woodhouse?s journal concerns Captain Sitgreaves? reconnaissance for a wagon road westward from Zuñi to the Colorado River of the West. It also records a perilous, starving descent of that untamed river to the Yuma Crossing. The doctor?s entries grew with scientific curiosity and increasing concern for finding water and meetinghostile natives. His extensive notes on plants and animals were part of the first effort to describe and map what is now northern Arizona. His diaries also provide the first detailed description of the Walapai and Mohave peoples the explorers encountered. Sam Woodhouse?s private journal is published here for the first time. Although the basic facts of the Sitgreaves expedition have long been known, the journal adds much detail and great depth to the story, allowing the editors to draw credible conclusions about natural science and Southwestern exploration in the mid-nineteenth century. The color plates reproduce some of the earliest chromolithography done in the United States.

In his varied and exciting career, Ernest Thompson Seton was a great naturalist, a distinguished painter of wildlife and a best-selling writer of animal stories. He was also organizer of the Woodcraft Indians which later became Boy Scouts of America. Born in Canada, he went to New York where, unknown and penniless, he fought for recognition as a writer and an illustrator. Just when he began to sell his animal stories, he was threatened by blindness. Here is the colorful story of a man who lived adventurously, succeeded in spite of physical handicap, and became a legend amount naturalists and lovers of wild animals and the great outdoors.

The great unknown of the Southwest is conquered by a one-armed man and his crew of adventurers, placing the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon on the map of the American continent. It is a journey no human being had ever made before. Dangerous rapids, narrow canyon walls offering no escape, terrifying river waterfalls, capsized boats, near drowning, lost equipment and disillusioned men are dramatically described by John Wesley Powell, leader of this adventurous party. In this first recording as an audiobook, Powell powerfully describes the spectacular beauty of the landscape, the fascinating lives of the indigenous people and the courageous efforts of the expedition party.